Autocratic figure changed Singapore
Lee Kuan Yew transformed the city state of Singapore from a malariainfested backwater into one of the first Asian Tiger economies.
Supporters viewed him as a towering figure in post-colonial Asia, a leader who turned the former British colony into one of the richest places on the planet almost by sheer force of will alone. He created an efficient government with little corruption, cracked down heavily on crime, built a first-class education system and attracted foreign companies with low taxes.
However Lee was also viewed as an authoritarian leader who used draconian tactics to clamp down on free speech and any sign of dissent. Some of his political rivals were jailed without trial for decades and he brought defamation lawsuits against journalists and opposition politicians for daring to stand up to him.
In a biography, Lee Kuan Yew: The Man And His Ideas, he spelled out his philosophy: “I’m very determined. If I decide that something is worth doing, then I’ll put my heart and soul to it. The whole ground can be against me, but if I know it is right, I’ll do it. That’s the business of a leader.”
And many Singaporeans idolised the man who became Singapore’s first Prime Minister in 1959 and held power for more than 30 years. Even after standing down in 1990, he stayed a member of the Cabinet until 2011 and was an MP at his death. It was widely recognised he had a lot of influence over the Prime Minister, his eldest son Lee Hsien Loong.
Lee was born a British citizen in Singapore in 1923 and lived through the Japanese occupation of the city during World War II, working as a translator for the Japanese and narrowly avoiding being shot in the Sook Ching massacre.
After the war, he achieved a double first in law at Cambridge University. He also met and married his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, while in Britain. She died in 2010.
In early life Lee was a Socialist and, after returning to Singapore in 1949, he became a leading lawyer specialising in workers’ rights. He also helped to found the People’s Action Party, which won office in 1959 and never lost it. Lee led Singapore into a merger with Malaysia in 1963 but re-established it as an independent country in 1965 amid violent clashes between different ethnic groups.
He later described the split as a “moment of anguish” and it was an experience that had a lasting effect on his style of leadership. “Freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore,” he once said.
His mix of capitalism and strong government which some compared to Communist dictatorships certainly seemed to work because the country’s gross national product per person rose by 15 times between 1960 and 1980. Today the International Monetary Fund ranks its citizens as the third richest in the world.
Lee admitted he had sometimes done “nasty things”, like “locking fellows up without trial”, in an interview with the New York Times in 2010.
“I’m not saying everything I did was right,” he added. “But everything I did was for an honourable purpose.” — Independent